Boomikins!

ALL UPDATES AT BOTTOM!

Honestly I am still learning proper technique with a boomkin, But I am doing a solid 25k DPS with a few buffs so I figure I'll be the first to share my specs on what and where

First off my spec - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Hellscream/ashkenequazi/advanced

One thing I will be changing is to get rid of solar beam and Furor - Honestly Solar beam has little to no raid use, and Furor doesnt do anything but give me a little more mana... Honestly If I am running low on mana I am NOT doing something right... I will be putting those 2 points into Blessing of the Grove for a little added moonfire damage.

Basic rotation? Well... depends on where you are honestly. For burst you need to already be in lunar eclipse at 100% before the fight. For AoE you need to be in Solar eclipse. But if you arent in either at the start of a fight, Here are my standards...


Start off by preparing with wild mushrooms under where the boss SHOULD be tanked at.
Moonfire - Insect swarm

Follow up with 5 Starfires (this puts you in solar eclipse, and the first moonfire SHOULD give you the haste buff so you have a faster cast on starfire - start by re-arming insect swarm. afterwards blow your mushrooms (Solar increases nature damage based on mastery so they will do a bit more damage, and with 3 up it should do about as much as 2 starfires, maybe 3. Then sunfire to give you the haste buff again and begin spamming wrath till you are all the way to lunar eclipse.

This is the basic notion, but there are some variables. ANY time starsurge is off CD use it, no matter the eclipse or if you arent in one. Moonfire and Swarm will sometimes give you a free CD reset and instant cast, so hit it ASAP when that happens ( the idea is that if it is already off CD use it, and by chance your dots may trigger another right after).

When you hit lunar eclipse, immediately hit starfall, it's not a LOT of damage, but its 20 hits for a good amount and it does its own thing so you dont have to channel. then moonfire for haste, and start going for the starfire again till solar.

Always be sure your moonfire and swarm are up, they keep continuous damage no matter what, and add a good bit to overall DPS. Typhoon honestly isn't strong enough to toss into the rotation, so I wouldnt wast a GCD on it.


As for AoE - Mushrooms on the ground where the mass should be gathered. If already in solar be careful - they do a TON of damage and can easily pull aggro off of a tank. afterwards moonfire -tab - moonfire - tab, with lunar shower your moonfire becomse about a 100 mana spell and will barely touch your mana pool. Glyphed and such it will also cycle your eclipses slowly which is good. Hurricane can be used as well, but try to moonfire dot everything once first, hurricane uses WAYYY too much mana to spam, so be careful. If still in solar eclipse, then hurricane is a good choice, otherwise just swarm and moonfire dots. With the dagger from Madness of DW (even the LFR one) and the trinket (cunning of the cruel?) your AoE damage spreads even more. Also typhoon should be used on CD, but be careful of direction and location of other groups, the thing has a fairly long reach.

Thats about all for rotation - maybe Monj will give some input as well.

As far as stats go, I use the basic principal - Int is good, haste is good. I try to gem Int/Haste gems everywhere that it will fit and give a socket bonus. mostly because the 40 int gems are too much for a red socket. Above anything be sure to be at hit cap. Reforge Crit into haste, if you already have haste, go for mastery. If you need hit - go for spirit. Haste is a massive stat due to the speed you can go through eclipses. Each time you hit an eclipse, you do more damage, and get 16% mana back - A fairly nice tradeoff.

I'll update more when i figure out anything new.


UPDATE 1 ----- With my current mastery, eclipse bonus is 55% - nature damge for solar, arcane for lunar.
UPDATE 2 ----- Go and download RAWR from elitistjerks.com It is actually extremely accurate for boomkins, It gave an extimated 30k burst DPS and thats about what I pull fully buffed, so I'd give it a go, I know a lot of specs and classes aren't done yet in it though, they have been updating it slowly.

A little image as to my DPS with a full set of buffs, after the talent change. focusing on raid level boss target thingy.

Ok just a question in your topic on stats it appears you are saying that you dont put in 40int gems but you do the int/haste gems. Are you doing that regardless the socket bonus? My understanding is that put a int gem in all red sockets and ignore the socket bonus if it is less than 20int but if the bonus is 20int or greater use either a int/spirit gem for blue sockets and a int/haste gem for yellow sockets. To note though if you are close to a haste threshold for your dot then it may be benifical to alter that slightly. Correct me if I am wrong

Eh... it's a choice really, if you put more int, you get more Spell power - but with more haste you eclipse faster, therefor the damage bonus of eclipse is MUCH greater than spell power, I always go for socket bonuses on a spell class, for RED sockets, use the 40int or better gems, but they cost so much I dont bother and just use reckless instead. More haste is more a gain than int for me, 20 spell power (about the equivalent of 20 int) has less benefit than hitting your eclipse and gaining a 30-40% damage bonus + regen of mana. You aren't really relying on the ticks per cast for moonfire since you are going to refresh it during each eclipse anyway.

I don't know I guess I would have thought that gaining 281 spellpower would be a bigger dps increase then losing 1.64% haste.

Eh, at that rate probably not much of a difference, but I am FAR below haste cap for a boomkin, i need about another 400 rating before I can get rid of the gems for more int - Int stacking is best when you are at the hight of your class, in my case i need to replace 2 more pieces of gear and I will be high enough in haste to stack int more.

After doing the math, If I were to change to where all of my red sockets were +40 int gems, I would gain 800DPS, my cycle time would increase by 2 seconds (basically 4%) and I would level out with haste and such, with my 397 helm from valor and everything reforged properly, I would gain 2100 DPS and my cycle time decrease by 2 seconds, so after I get my helm in a couple weeks I will start investing in 40int gems.

This is based on burst, which a boomkin can do for hours on end without losing mana, and my average burst right now is 28-30k DPS Basic rotation DPS for a boss is 24-26k self buffed --- Buffed its burst 32 - 34k and regular 25-27k.

Changing my gems to int wouldn't hurt my cycle time too bad, so I may start investing in the gems. Thanks for the input Galf

In gemming a boomkin, Aye is correct you must have the proper haste rating so your starfire is at 2 sec. and your wrath is at 1.7 sec. Int. does give you more SP and Crit which crit for a boomkin is completly worthless, as for the spec.. it depends how you see the raid format, i have Furor because if someone needs an innervate im glyphed to get 10% of the mana i own so i get back an extra 10% which is nice in some spots but its all how you want to do it. BoG is a good talent and one i plan to spec into just because with the Moonfire glyph it will significantly increase your dmg output by atleast 35% on just moonfire alone. The rotation is prolly the easiest thing although i have to correct you on one thing.. With starsurge you are right to use it everytime but you wanna time it right cause when it gives you that solar or lunar you can match it up just right so your not casting while you have already entered either state hence providing you with more dps

PS. IM THE BOOMKIN GURU

Update----

Playing around with stats at a higher level of gear, for now at least, I have figured out that when you use the MRrobot thing, go to the build screan, customize, and set mastery to 2.15 like haste is. this increase in DP is actually noticeable. every point of mastery stat is another 2% damage per spell while eclipsed. Although it is hard to get a lot of mastery, at max Ilvl, My haste would be the same, and I would have another 5 points in mastery, which in terms is 10% more overall damage on top of the spell power increases I would have at that time.

This really only applies to monj as far as our raid team goes since he is our only other boomkin and he actually has a high enough Ilvl to use this method. Also I have learned that even at 16.80 hit% I still never miss. this is on a 2000 spell cast cycle. And on average per boss I cast less than 400 spells or so. so I figure that if i were going to miss, I would do it within 5 bosses worth of casts. Also since I swapped my build from Haste-2.15 mastery 1.15 to mastery/haste 2.15 I have had an overall increase of about 10% DPS on an average fight. as my gear gets better, I am seeing this number get even higher. For a boomkin you don't need 30+% haste to be on mark. 26% puts each spell at a reasonable mark, and still adds that extra tick for your DoTs. I currently sit at about 29% with average raid buffs though, and without hero I can get 60% or more for 21 seconds of every cycle. which is about 40 seconds a minute. not too bad really.